I love all of these! It's been too damn long. I've mojoed you but I feel the need to do at least a little public recognition.

"A woman, who was an Art History teacher, and her beau, an artist, were married in a festive and creative ceremony befitting the artistically-inclined couple." I love the set up - totally digable. Just this one line evokes so much.

"A woman made of wax." I loved the squishiness of this....it kept slipping through my fingers, changing in front of me.

"Emily found him slumped over the newspaper, facedown in a puddle of coffee with a half-eaten piece of toast still in his hand." Wendy, you have no idea how easy it is for me to see this. A similar thing just happened to someone I know and the thought is so chilling, for such a possible scenario.

"Mediocrity was always happily waiting in the wings when inspiration failed." I'm such a sucker for art about art. The fears and stumbling blocks you write on are very close to my heart, and the analogy is spot on.

"Grown ups don’t live like this, Lena muttered." Lena is so instantly real, Traci, so immediate and true. The characterization here is stunning.

I could write for days about how great these are! :snap: I'm definitely waiting two weeks to change the topic, so we can see more submissions. Let's see what you've got!

This is really fun- I love short stories, and I really love seeing the different stories arise out of a central theme or idea.
MBC, you're full of ****, mister. What a fantastic story! :snap:

Traci, I believe I know that chick you wrote of, but she was offed by a serial killer a few years back. Sorry....* (Huge snaps on the story, though- punky and right up my alley!)

Eliza, I read your story right after I posted mine and immediately felt guilty, as though Emily had caused your person's difficulties. I assure you, she made certain the house was empty before torching it! Great read, ty!!:cheers:

CP, my initial idea was too similar to your wonderful story, so I changed it this morning. (Now I see all the typos and rough spots, but oh well....) Thanks for getting this going- great fun!

(*My sis-in-law was very much like Lena, but she wasn't able to rise above the dreck and was killed a few years back).

Thanks for the kind words. :) Still, I'm surprised that you are just now figuring out that I'm full of ****. :D

Man, I cannot WAIT to read these. I am, however, still in the middle of mine and I don't want to check out everybody else's until I'm done-- probably later today. Know that I'm not ignoring everybody's creative output-- and that I'm so glad this thread is back on track!

I feel that need also, but I'm way too lazy to do it right now. Let me just say though, that I LOVED every single one.

It occurred to me last night that this is the first fiction I've written since ninth grade. That would make it about ten years. I know my topic isn't nearly as creative as the others, but I had to dig pretty deep just to find the story I wrote. :p Kudos again, CP, for helping us find our creative voices. :coffee:

:eek: Bullsht! No WAY you've been laying dormant for that long. Your story is definitely creative! Don't even think otherwise. The scenario you created was totally different from the others. And what execution!

I hereby forbid any negative thinking on your part - you don't deserve it, sweets.



I keep forgetting you're younger than me...:p

It's funny, LSPE wrote that she didn't read the other stories because she was still writing her own... I read them all to propel me to do something... I've been in such a block. I hope I can get something out, if this mild hangover doesn't threaten to remove my brain.

Lol, I couldn't believe it myself when I realized how long it had been. In fact, the only things I've written since high school have been either here or my LJ, so anything I've written in the last seven years, you've most likely read.

And thanks for the compliment. No negativity here, I'm impressed that I came up with anything at all, though I did feel that my character was a bit cliche. Whereas, I didn't feel that at all about any of you guys characters.

I'm not much younger am I? I'm 25. Aren't you 27?

Meg's heart did not break when Angela left. It did not feel broken, exactly, like shards of her heart were slicing cleanly into the organs, the flesh surrounding it. At a cocktail party, when one of their mutual friends accidentally mentioned Angela in passing, the words did not plunge into Meg with ragged pain. They did not draw blood. They did nothing.

She imagined that if a heart was to break, it would need to be brittle in the first place. Cold, smooth, glass. Or it would have to be like bone china; a broken heart would have skeletal ash ground into the fabric of it, to steel a softer material with the powdered remains of what once was strong.

But bone china breaks like any other plate, if hit with enough force. If her heart head been made of such mettle, the jagged edges would already have torn into her ribcage, through her breasts, gashing the soft skin from the inside so the blood would sluice out and release her.

It hadn't. But then, when her heart had felt anything at all, it felt nothing like glass or china. It was not cold, or smooth. It was intangible. It was horrible. It was ablaze. Meg had felt more pain while she was with Angela than she ever had after she was gone.

There was that time they'd driven to the ocean. Meg had never seen it before--they were sophomores at Wesleyan--and Angela's family had once lived in a seaside village a four-hour pitch down the road. They weren't there anymore, but Angela remembered a cove that was difficult to reach.

"Come on, bunny," Angela had tempted. "A free, private beach for a daytrip getaway."

"It's just not practical. I have class early tomorrow, and you have to work tonight."

"Who needs practicality? I'll call in sick."

"You'll get fired again," Meg said.

"I won't," she huffed. "I told them yesterday I was feeling queasy."

"You are sneaky. But we don't have money for a trip."

"We have enough money for gas. You'll weasel some croissants and cheese from the cafeteria for lunch. I’ve got some cheap champagne I lifted from the Merchant of Vino." Angela always was light-fingered. And charming. Meg acquiesced.

They parked the car on a side street, and walked passed row upon row of airy pizza parlors, salt water taffy stands, and stores full of kitsch and flip-flops before they got to a steep, rocky hill. Lost in her own thoughts, Meg continued on for several yards before she realized the other girl had quietly darted over the stones. As she stumbled to catch up with Angela, she concentrated only on the cracks and crevices in her path.

It wasn't until she was well over the impasse that she looked up to see the profile of her lover, already barefoot and dancing along the edge of the shore, waves lapping at her feet. The sun was kissing Angela's shoulders just so, and at that moment Meg felt an aching in her chest. In her stomach. In her teeth. Meg yearned to be closer to Angela-- no, not closer. Touching was good enough. She wanted to be inside her. And not even in a sexual way, she knew, though surely she wanted that as well. But at that instant, she only wanted to curl up into a little ball inside of her. To meld with her. To be her, to have her. The fire she felt in her heart was exquisite, maddening.

Years later, Meg mused, it only made sense that she was left with nothing but ashes.

She stayed in one place. New crops of students sprouted every fall, ebbed predictably in the summers. She never needed to get to know any of the temporary residents of Middletown; in four years they’d probably be brave enough to move on. She hadn’t been.

Meg settled into a position as a grill cook in a shiny diner trailer not far from campus. She kept her head down, her thoughts stymied by constant influx of demands for crispier hash browns and more feta cheese. The cheerful banter of clientele was only white noise.

During her off-hours, she tuned in--tuned out, rather--to old television reruns in order to fill the cavity that had once been filled with ideas, or energy, or motivation. The wretched and repeated storylines hardly registered. Every thought was neutral. Shades of white, of eggshell, of taupe. What she ate, what she wore, what she wanted didn’t even register.

In later months, she felt strong enough to find solace in the movie theater, challenged slightly more by complex relationships and exploding boats.

And then, finally, she returned to books. Reading was an active pastime; she could not zombie her way through literature. Or poetry.

She sat slumped in a wicker chair she’d dragged to the woods behind the diner. She ran her fingertip along the edge of her most recent tome, a collection by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which sat heavily in her lap. She was in control of how the words moved, how they passed over her, how they crumbled into her soul. And she let them.

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun `tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.

And there it was again, against her will: that fire, that cursed aching need to see the sun glint off Angela’s hair as she danced on the shore. To run her fingertips across Angela’s stomach, to feel the gooseflesh raise and ripple her soft skin. To hear Angela’s breathing go quicker, shallower, as she lost herself in the throb of her clitoris. And Meg lost herself in the pulse of her own heart, rising like a phoenix from the ashes.

Just turned 29 :)

Seriously nailed it, H.